The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
Persons utilizing slotted toasters can have problems removing food products from the slotted toasters without suffering injury, particularly thermal injury. Persons utilizing slotted toasters can suffer thermal injury when reaching into the slots to retrieve food products from the slotted toasters either after or before completion of the toasting cycle. Moreover, persons utilizing toasters can suffer thermal injury from the heated food product itself when grabbing the toasted food product from the slotted toaster. Accordingly, an instrument is needed to assist preventing thermal injury to a user while inserting and retrieving heated food products from slotted toasters.
Prior attempts to solve this problem have been less than successful and have been found to not provide an adequate cooking solution. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. D384,858 by Kurz provides a sandwich holder that can be inserted into a slot of a toaster. However, as shown the Kurz sandwich holder has a closed side that allows for heating of the enclosed food product such as a sandwich, but does not allow for toasting thereof. This is similarly a characteristic of U.S. Pat. No. 3,564,992 by Sattes that is specifically designed for broiling of a food product. U.S. Pat. No. D584,917 by Mullen illustrates a toaster grill that can toast a food product, but that blocks a portion of the food product at the bottom from being toasted. This design also suffers from the undesirable inherent characteristic that the bottom traps any fallen food within the assembly at the bottom of the assembly. Further, in the Mullen design, two hands are required to close and open the assembly and thereby for inserting and removing the assembly and the food product contained therein. This is similarly an undesirable characteristic of U.S. Pat. No. 4,184,419 by Ponte. Both Mullen and Ponte also suffer from the inability to enclose the ends of the food product which can result in a portion of the food product from extending outward within the slot of the toaster during insertion therein. The two handled operation is also an inherent limitation of U.S. Pat. No. 1,312,616 by Cowan; U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,849,947 and 2,962,957 each by Bork; U.S. Pat. No. 3,094,061 by Cole; and U.S. Pat. No. D592,010 by Russel et al. U.S. Patent Publication No. 2009/0293737 by Davis provides a removable toaster basket assembly wherein the handle can be removed from a food holding basket with a single hand, but where the food product can only be removed from the food holding basket by dumping or turning the entire assemble nearly upside down to dispense the heated food product. Each of these references suffers from limitations as will be described as being solved by the present disclosure.